


Of Flowers and Kisses

by Sounddrive



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Childhood Friends, Crushes, First Crush, Gen, M/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-07-20 07:37:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19988503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sounddrive/pseuds/Sounddrive
Summary: Two friends and a little snake make the most out of discarded wares from the flower festival in Vesuvia.Time frame: set roughly a year or so after the tale “Travel At Night”.Pre-Relationship, with Faust being her mischievous self.





	Of Flowers and Kisses

It was so hot that the humidity clung to one’s body like an unwanted, second skin.

 _Maybe this is how Faust feels when she’s shedding,_ Muriel thought to himself. Still, he wrapped his heavy blanket around himself, the scent of myrrh keeping him grounded.

Workers and barkers for several booths were shouting all at once. It was annoying. _Those_ people were reminding shoppers that they had another ten minutes before the flower festival was officially shut down.

Muriel stuck closer to one of the columns on the perimeter, his tired eyes scanning the crowds for any sign of Asra and Faust. The teenager tried to ignore the fact that as many Vesuvians passed him by, they flinched at the sight of him. In turn, Muriel scrunched down against the rounded side of the column, squinting in the bright sunlight.

 _Where are you?_ Muriel wondered, his green eyes roving over the dissipating crowds beyond him. His dedicated squinting is soon rewarded by a familiar sight: a flash of white, and a red scarf wrapped around a child in ill-fitting clothes...

...Who also had goodness knew how many bunches of flowers in his little arms.

 _Flowers!_ Faust declared in a squeaky voice.

Muriel glanced over Asra, not seeing her entangled in her magician’s puffy white hair from when he last saw her. She had to be hidden in Asra’s scarf.

She sounded immensely proud.

“C’mon!” Asra said cheerfully. He passed Muriel, stopping when the latter didn’t move. Asra hopped in place for his best friend to start walking after him. Once the other did, they made a beeline to the docks.

Muriel, as always, was at his cloud-headed companion’s heels. When a bundle of flowers, or even a singleton, dropped out from Asra’s arms, Muriel was there to pick up after him.

“...how did you get so many?” Muriel inquired, counting almost a dozen flower types in his own arms alone.

“People threw out perfectly good ones!” Asra replied simply. He turned back to say another thing, only to stop. He stopped so suddenly Muriel almost knocked Asra over by bumping into him.

 _Oops!_ Faust was jostled around, but wasn’t in danger of falling to the ground, luckily.

“Why’d you stop?” Muriel asked.

“Sorry I keep dropping ‘em Muri." Asra looked on at the bunch of flowers in his best friend's arms.

“It’s ok...” Muriel reassured his much smaller friend.

By the time the three of them reached the hideaway under the docks, many of the flowers had lost their petals. Muriel shrugged off his blanket so that they could lay out the flowers on top of it.

He sorted them out by size; Asra sorted them out by color.

In the end, much to both of their dismays, many of the flowers were either too short of stem or they had lost too many of their petals. The ones without their petals looked barren, and...

_Sad._

Muriel frowned, wondering how they could salvage this... if they even _could._

It was a stroke of luck that Asra was able to get any of these flowers in the first place.

As Muriel pondered, he didn’t realize Asra had started to poke around his bed. Some items were shuffled about, turned upside down only to be set upright and refilled with their proper contents—sometimes repeatedly—until finally-

“I got an idea!” Asra declared, rushing back to his seated friend.

Over by Muriel’s side was where Asra settled, sitting with his legs tucked under him. In one hand, Asra held a spool of thread. In his other hand was one of the bigger sewing needles he had in his collection. It was made of bone or porcelain, Muriel thought.

 _Sew?_ Faust asks, finally poking her head out of Asra’s scarf.

 _“Maybe_ it’ll work,” Asra said, threading a medium width amount of thread into the eye of the needle.

“...Asra, it might not work,” Muriel murmured, looking skeptically at the majority of the flowers they had on hand.

“Still, I wanna try it!” Asra says with a grin.

Muriel just followed his lead. Together the two of them, watched by Faust, set about to arrange the flowers together.

*****

Most of the surviving flowers are goldenrods, Asra explained. Muriel isn’t so sure what they were or what they meant, but the color seemed to match the sunshine. Within the confines of Asra’s hidden little gateway, beneath the docks, the flowers are bright. Almost _too_ bright, in Muriel’s opinion.

Asra was happy though. In turn, Muriel kept his mouth shut on that matter.

Taking stem by stem, end by end, and some careful sewing together of the flowers later...

The two of them had two pairs of semi circular flower necklaces. They were ridiculously long on Asra. They were so long, the bottom-most flower reached down to his elbows, if he placed his knuckles under his chin. Despite that, Asra laughed in delight. He lifted a string of flowers to Faust. The little morph stuck her little tongue out, tasting the air in curiosity.

_Flowers!_

“Pft haha! You got it Faust,” Asra cooed, nuzzling his tiny friend.

Muriel blinked a few times, seeing Asra pepper about half a dozen kisses on Faust’s little head. Faust was giggling at Asra’s affections.

Muriel didn’t realize he was staring until Faust looked _right_ at him.

_Kisses for Muri?_

**_“What?!”_ ** Muriel sputtered. The flowers in his hands were blown from their stems with the force of his exclamation.

“Faust, nooo,” Asra shushed. He was however, unable to hide his laughter.

Muriel’s mind screeched to a raging halt. No, no that would be _bad_. That would be _terrible_. Kisses meant _things_ that Muriel wasn’t prepared for. No no no no no no _no-_

Muriel gently set down the flowers on a separate rug before he brusquely wrapped his blanket around himself.

“I’m sleeping outside on the beach!” Muriel squeaked, cursing the constant changing of pitch in his voice. He stomped outside, past the overhang of the dock, and found a place to plop down for the night.

If the sun were out, it would have betrayed the exact shade of red Muriel’s face had become.

He cocooned himself into his blanket on the sandy beach, the scent of myrrh overpowering his ridiculous thoughts.

 _Calm down, calm down, calm down_...

After a while, Muriel hears the familiar pace of Asra’s footsteps coming toward him. Muriel wills himself to be still. He wished the sand would swallow him up, to hide him...

“Muri?”

“Go away...” Muriel groans.

There was a soft _thud_ beside him. Muriel shut his eyes as he cursed himself. The green-eyed teenager remained stock-still for a while, until his tensed up body started to ache.

Muriel reluctantly sat upright, lowering the blanket from around his head to where it pooled around his elbows. He didn’t need to look to know that Asra had settled down in the sand, just off to his right.

Even as the waves rolled unto the beach they sat upon, Muriel could hear Asra say, “‘m sorry for laughing.”

Muriel closed his eyes once more, inhaling deeply. Myrrh, the salty sea air, and the smell of the flowers they worked with were what he could detect.

“...apology accepted,” Muriel rumbled. He finally looked over to see Asra beaming up at him.

That _damn_ smile, with those dimples...

Muriel swallowed. He hoisted his blanket up to his shoulders again, like a turtle going into its shell... at least partially. He didn’t miss the ring of flowers in Asra’s hands, however.

“...that’s different,” Muriel noted.

In Asra’s hands, there was another circlet made of flowers. Instead of being sewn together however, it was clumsily braided.

“The thread didn’t hold together,” Asra explained. He paused a moment, reworking an errant stem into place. “Hopefully, this’ll stay together.”

He held it out toward Muriel.

“Can I put it on your head?”

In answer, Muriel scooted closer to him, facing Asra now. “You’re so weird,” he muttered, wrapping his blanket just a little closer around himself.

Muriel dipped his head a little, his greasy, black hair becoming a curtain over his face.

Whether or not Asra knew he witnessed him, _his_ best friend, kissing the flower crown before placing it over his head, Muriel hoped his the cloud-headed companion would never ask.

Wordlessly, Muriel shifted, facing the ocean once more. He extended a corner of his blanket to Asra. The latter happily nabbed the corner, twirling himself into it, mindful of Muriel’s arm.

Once Asra was settled against Muriel’s side, it didn’t take long for him to fall asleep.

 _Night night?_ Faust’s sleepy voice peeped from within Asra’s scarf.

“Go to sleep,” Muriel replied.

_Okay... night night._

“... Good night.”

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Originally posted to tumblr on July 26th, 2019.
> 
> This work was a part of the "Fields of Vesuvia" gift exchange on tumblr! Giftee was vesuvianfool on tumblr, and one of the options they wanted as a gift was some Asmuri content!
> 
> I hope you guys enjoyed this as much as I had writing it! Thank you for reading!


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